Last login was awhile back, about abandoning the MS ship on a new computer. I finally went with another XP Pro installation + Ubuntu 9.10 on a dual boot after MS Genuine Advantage marked the OS as possibly pirated. It wasn't. I sent them all necessary documents along with the installation disk purchased on E-bay, all clean, all legit. They want to offer me a replacement with Windows 7 for some more $$. No. This is the end of it with MS if they manage to shut off the legit XP Pro install. One thing I can say for XP Pro is that it is stable. A process might crash now and then, but it can be shut down manually w/o affecting anything else. XP OS has never crashed, not once.

So now I'm looking for a version of Linux that's as user-friendly to install and use as Ubuntu. Ubuntu does a great job, except when it stops. It just freezes. REISUB sequence won't usually work. The machine just freezes, on average about once every 2-3 hours. (This msg is being written from XP so as to be sure the OS endures to get it out.)

Rather than having to experiment with a dozen or more other Linux flavors to replace Ubuntu, I decided to ask around for recommendations.

For folks looking for stable easy to run Linux distros, I ususally point them to Mepis, Mandriva & PCLinuxOS. You should download their Live CD's from Distrowatch and give them a spin. These are KDE based distros, if your happy with Gnome (as I am), there's always Debian, or the distro I use Fedora.

Now, if you are happy with Ubuntu, instead of giving up and switching distro's, why not try to find out why it sometimes dies on you? Ubuntu is a decent distro, it might be easier to fix than to switch.

Registered Linux User #348347 Currently using KDE with "siduction" and fedora.

For folks looking for stable easy to run Linux distros, I ususally point them to Mepis, Mandriva & PCLinuxOS. You should download their Live CD's from Distrowatch and give them a spin. These are KDE based distros, if your happy with Gnome (as I am), there's always Debian, or the distro I use Fedora.

Now, if you are happy with Ubuntu, instead of giving up and switching distro's, why not try to find out why it sometimes dies on you? Ubuntu is a decent distro, it might be easier to fix than to switch.

Many thanks. I'll give those suggestions a try. I'm just trying to narrow down the field.

My first response to Ubuntu crashes was to try and fix it. Searches indicate that Ubuntu has a history of being unstable. I figured rather than do more research for one more case study, just accept the experiences others have had and reported in various fora. Also, when I install an OS that the producer certifies as stable, I take it to mean not unstable. Thread crashes are okay and can be sorted out. Entire OS crashes aren't okay, because the system crashes in the midst of trying to fix it (or anything else.) Plus there's all the time involved in sorting out problems. In short, the time and effort involved in trying to fix a buggy OS is prohibitive. The solution, IMO, is a stable OS to start with. Ubuntu doesn't have a good record in that regard. But, again, it does what it does very well -- when it's doing it and not crashing.

I can't argue with you about the latest Ubuntu release. I have also read about the many problems folks have had with it. The previous release, though, had very few problems. I guess when you need to include things like Grub2, when it's still a work in progress, or other new apps/versions/technologies just to say your on the cutting edge, some instability will accompany it. One of the reasons I'm using Fedora now is because, even though it's a testing distro for Red Hat and usually contains bleeding edge technology, the devs seem to hold back using the unstable, and schedule it for a later release. Not that Fedora doesn't have it's quirks, but it doesn't advertise itself as a newbie friendly distro. I remember all those distros that needed to be on the KDE4 train well before KDE4 was even close to stable, I'm a Gnome user now because of that, after exclusively using KDE since I started using Linux. The fact that a distro like Mepis has stayed with KDE 3.5 and will only now move to KDE4 shows how IMHO a stable newbie friendly distro should function.
Ok, enough of my editorializing. Good luck. Let us know how you make out.

Registered Linux User #348347 Currently using KDE with "siduction" and fedora.

Ubuntu is less stable than some other distros out there and is around as stable as windows. But as GionEasy9 stated the 9.04 release was far more dependable. However complete system crashes are rare because of the tiered architecture on Linux based systems. More than looking for a replacement OS in this case I would highly recommend trying to find and fix you issue, if it is the result of a kernel panic or a disk write issue then the problem may be hardware based rather than software in which you can call it a good warning.

However if you liked the feel of Ubuntu and still wish to find something more stable then you should checkout Debian which is the core of Ubuntu; the Debian project is more for stability than aesthetics, so the packages may be older but they will be more stable.

Mepis is based on Debian stable, so it's rock-stable. The latest Beta supports the latest KDE, too.

I recently discovered Xubuntu 9.10, which ships without alot of the troublesome stuff that Ubuntu does (no PulseAudio, no Mono, etc) and seems quite stable. Xfce plays nice with Gnome, too.

I avoided Xubuntu until now, because I have read tons of complaints about Xubuntu's "bloat" and such descriptions as "not lightweight after all." But after running into "the 'buntu barrier" with LXDE, I decided to experiment with Karmix Xubuntu.

Xubuntu has been seriously dieting, apparently. It's faster on an older Dell desktop than even the minimalist Crunchbang (Openbox) was! There is much less of the "bloat" that I had read about, and - on my hardware at least - has none of the bugginess of its Gnome and KDE siblings. It has been a very stable, very pleasant surprise. Definitely worth a shot.